Powerless

Warning. I think this post is kind of wordy. Yeah. Sorry about that.

Today I am going to give you an object lesson.

Why am I giving you an object lesson?
Because it was the same object lesson that I got this week.
And sometime a blogger needs a little push to give her a good idea to write about.
: )

The story goes that I was helping a friend re-do her house. She has had it as a rental of sorts for a number of years and it is time to part with it. As you can imagine, some things in the house needed a little…attention. For lack of a better word.

One of those things being one of those stock steel doors. You know the kind. It’s metal, you put it on the outside of your house, it has a 9-paned window grid.
Yeah, you know the kind.

Now, rather than replacing the door because it was in fine condition apart from how it looked, I decided to paint it. So you put this special metal primer on it. And then you get a nice foam roller and you pick your best paint.

Great. It looks great.
But…..then you have to paint the grid.
Remember those 9 panes?
Yeah. The grid that separates them has to be painted too.

I don’t know about you, but when I paint I refuse to tape anything off. I either, A. Am careful and use a really good “cutting” brush or B. Do what I call the “mascara technique,” which means that sometimes it’s just easier to sloppily glob stuff on and then wipe it off. Like mascara. And paint.

I chose option B. because the window is glass and you can razor blade paint off glass.

Which I started to do.

But here’s the deal. I was working with this tool:

Now, this tool has its purposes and if it was sharp I would assume that it would work fine.

However, it wasn’t as sharp as I needed it to be.
So, it only KIND OF worked.
It got the big, easy stuff off the window. But the little bits left over in the corners? Not so much.
And I believe in perfect-able things being perfect. I will not settle for half-good.
See, here are some of the bits it couldn’t get:

 

Needless to say, I had to get the right tool.
This guy:

Yeah. Super sharp. The only thing that will work for the job.

And as I was scraping away, getting into all the little corners, this phrase came to my mind:

“What the law was powerless to do….” (Romans 8:3)
Because I was finally getting rid of the things “the dull scraper was powerless to do….”

And now I think I get that verse.

I am not of Hebrew descent, so the whole issue with the Law that the Bible talks about over and over again about I sometimes feel foreign to. As the phrase goes, “It’s all Greek to me.” Or in this case, “It’s all Hebrew to me…”

See, the thing we have to realize is that the law was not totally without power, just like the first scraper. It accomplished the purpose God wanted it to. It could get rid of/stop one from doing some of the “big” stuff. Like, “Ok, now that there is a rule I suppose I won’t covet my neighbors stuff, I won’t kill anyone and I won’t cheat on my spouse. Big sins. Got it, I won’t do those now.”

It had power to “remove” those big, visible sins, of sorts. It made those things off-limits.
But, also like the first scraper, while the law could MOVE some sin around, it didn’t get rid of it. I mean, what were sacrifices in the Old Testament about? They weren’t redeeming sins! They were moving the guilt of sins. That’s all. That sin hadn’t been forgiven yet, it had been transferred to wherever God held it until he could pour it all out on Christ on the cross (Hebrews 10:1-18).
Because remember “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:5)—the law was powerless to TAKE AWAY sin, it just could just move it around.

However (don’t you love when there is a “However”?)—there is a second part to that verse. “What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering…”

GOD DID.

Can you keep yourself from smiling!??!

I certainly hope not.

The law was powerless to redeem us from our sin, and we were powerless to be sinless, but God— all powerful, completely Holy, without sin of any kind, in whom there is no darkness at all—God did what we couldn’t do. He did what the law was powerless to do, what we were powerless to do.

To redeem a sinful people. To erase guilt and shame. To once and for all GET RID of sin.

Just like that razor blade and the paint. The Right Tool came along and took care of all that everything else was powerless to take care of.

Because you have got to have the right tool, Wolfies. Only that is capable to make clean, free from impurities, clear as glass to let the Light shine through.  

~~~

And I think about this concept on a day to day basis. I turn it into a fill-in-the-blank.

 What the {blank} was powerless to do….

What kinds of things do we put in the blank, only to find out later that they, too, were powerless to do what we thought they were going to do?

Yeah, yeah, we think. Jesus was powerful to get rid of our sin where the law was powerless, but the day to day life kind of stuff? No, I need something else.

Like, remember that time you got into that relationship so that you would be happy and content? Because you thought that Jesus was powerless to fulfill that in your life?

Or remember that time you moved to that neighborhood and bought that huge house so you could impress those important people, because you though that Jesus’ opinion of you would suffice in Heaven but wasn’t enough here on earth?

Or remember that time you took that really high-paying job where, yeah, you had to sacrifice family time and you didn’t have time to do to church or do any kind of ministry or helping of other people, but goodness sakes! You had a lot of money in that bank, because, remember, Jesus was powerless to meet your needs here on earth. He could save your soul, but he couldn’t keep food on your table.

Or remember that time you tried to make yourself into something other than what Jesus did because what you thought you should be was going to get you further in life, and Jesus was powerless to move you where you needed to be?

I don’t say these things to guilt you. I write them because I myself have thought…and done…all of these things at one time or another.

But thanks be to God, I have found out that those things, which kind of became another “Law” to me, are indeed “powerless to do”….what I thought they would do.

They were not the right tool.

The world is simply…not the right tool.